The Redneck Manifesto - Hardcover

Goad, Jim

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684831139 ISBN 13: 9780684831138

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1997

Synopsis

Explores the mind and soul of one of society's favorite punch lines, exposing the truth about this very human group of people who have been scorned and insulted enough and are tired of being dubbed "white trash." 30,000 first printing.

About this title

From the Publisher:

In a book that is destined to be praised, reviled, cited, denounced, loved, and hated -- perhaps by the same reader -- culture maverick Jim Goad presents a thoroughly reasoned, darkly funny, and rampagingly angry defense of America's most maligned social group -- the cultural clan variously referred to as rednecks, hillbillies, white trash, crackers, and trailer trash (provided they're white trailer trash, of course).

As The Redneck Manifesto boldly points out and brilliantly demonstrates, America's dirty little secret isn't racism, but classism. While pouncing incessantly on racial themes, most major media are silent about America's widening class rifts, a problem which negatively affects more people of all colors than does racism. In a nation obsessed with race, this book switches the focus firmly back toward class, and it warns in a voice loud and clear that America will never learn the true meaning of tolerance until it learns to embrace the redneck.

Until this book, no one has so fully explained why white trash exists in America. Tracing the unique historical diaspora of America's white poor, The Redneck Manifesto offers evidence that mass forceful deportations of white slaves and convict laborers from the British Isles formed the bulk of America's white underclass. Tracing the history of these people, the book probes the hidden cultural meanings behind jokes about inbreeding and bestiality. It gets its hands dirty with blue-collar frustration, recreational desperation, and religious salvation. It discusses the value of Elvis, Bigfoot, and space aliens as objects of spiritual veneration. It offers solid logical defenses of tax protest, gun ownership, and antigovernment "hate speech." And it lists surprising reasons for why rednecks and blacks have more in common with each other than either group does with white liberals.

With an unmatched ability for rubbing salt in cultural wounds, Jim Goad deftly dismantles most popular American notions about race and culture and takes a sledgehammer to our delicate glass-blown popular conceptions of government, religion, media, and history. His own socioeconomic background leads him to prefer crackers over slackers, hillbillies over hipsters, and white trash over white cash. He is certain that the trailer park holds more honest people than the House of Representatives, and he knows from personal experience that truck drivers are more trustworthy than lawyers.

You've not read another book like The Redneck Manifesto because there are no other books like it. It's the sort of book that comes along once in a lifetime, which will be too often for some people. It's a rude awakening for a spazzed-out nation. A fire under the ass of a culturally confused country. A literary laxative for a constipated public. It's destined to prick the conscience of a nation which enjoys feeling guilty, but which doesn't like to do anything about it. You'll laugh, and then you'll hate yourself for laughing. Your mind will be pried open but it'll only hurt a little while.

About the Author:

Jim Goad Jim Goad, himself a proud member of The White Trash Nation, is the creator of and chief writer for ANSWER Me!, a controversial "zine" that he and his wife publish out of their home in Portland, Oregon. He does not presently live in a trailer park but is thinking about it. The Redneck Manifesto is his first book.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0684831139
• ISBN 13: 9780684831138
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272